


Fear in a Handful of Dust

by Lindenharp



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Drama, Gen, Historical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-16
Updated: 2010-04-16
Packaged: 2017-10-08 23:48:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/80748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lindenharp/pseuds/Lindenharp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the Doctor and Romana visit a traveling carnival, they find something dangerous hidden behind the fun and games. Romana consults a fortuneteller, and the Doctor gets a new hat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is an old story that I wrote in 1991, because I was dissatisfied with the way the BBC handled American characters and settings. Dedicated to the memory of David, who helped me make the physics stuff sound plausible.

_"I will show you fear in a handful of dust."  
T.S. Eliot, _The Waste Land__

The young woman twisted a strand of tawny hair around her finger and frowned at the instrument panel before her. "That's odd," she murmured.

Among the gleaming white walls and sophisticated devices, her flowery, lace-trimmed dress seemed as incongruous as the oak hat-stand that stood in a lone corner of the room. A casual observer might have guessed her to be a young graduate student, completing an experiment before dashing off to the dean's tea party.

The casual observer would have been almost right. At 125, Lady Romanadvoratrelundar was still quite young by Gallifreyan standards, and had only recently graduated from the Time Lord academy. Moreover, she was completing an experiment before attending a tea party; not with a dean, but with a lecturer in mathematics at Oxford University.

"Odd? What's odd?" The tall curly-haired man who strode into the room looked ready for a masquerade rather than a tea party, dressed as he was in a greatcoat, floppy hat, and a multicolored scarf of ridiculous length. Without waiting for a reply, he pulled a gold pocket watch from his vest.

"Romana, if you don't stop twiddling with that, we'll be late to tea, and I am very much looking forward to discussing the professor's ideas on symbolic logic."

With commendable patience, Romana refrained from mentioning that one could not be late in the TARDIS. That was, after all, the whole point of time travel.

"Pity K-9's circuits aren't repaired yet; I'm sure he'd enjoy it too," the Doctor added.

Romana took a moment to wonder if a Victorian-era mathematician would enjoy conversing with a metal dog whose understanding of the subject was superior to his own. "I'm nearly done," she said, "but there is something rather odd--"

The Doctor interrupted. "I also wanted to compliment him on his book, _An Elementary Treatise on Determinants_. Have you read it?"

Romana tried again. "Doctor, this reading--"

"Of course," the Time Lord mused, "when we see him, he won't actually have written it yet." He peered over her shoulder. "Romana, that's a terribly odd reading there. You're supposed to mention these things to me."

The Time Lady silently recited the first nineteen prime numbers in High Rigellian. "The origin point is on Earth. What do you make of it, Doctor?"

"Well, there seems to be some warping in the space-time metric. That's a bit peculiar."

That, Romana thought, was putting it mildly. The metric was the basic mathematical framework of space-time. Any warping in the metric could lead to disaster. "It's as if someone were trying to poke holes in the universe."

"Like a piece of Swiss cheese," the Doctor observed.

Romana wondered if she would ever get used to the Doctor's unscientific metaphors. "It's barely stable right now, but if the damage continues--"

"There will be more hole than cheese, and the local metric will crumple," the Doctor said cheerfully. "A discontinuity will be created, space-time will curl back on itself until it forms a black hole, and the entire planet will be destroyed."

Romana frowned. In theory, it was possible to mend a discontinuity. Bind just the right amount of matter into it, and it would form a micro-singularity, which would in turn trigger a small explosion, destroying itself. In practice, even Gallifreyan quantum geometry could not handle the calculations necessary to compute the correct mass. It was,  
as the Doctor might say, rather like trying to darn a sock while running -- and while wearing the sock. "What's causing it?" she asked.

"At first glance... that sort of distortion sometimes does occur with a maladjusted transmat."

Romana shook her head. "Can't be. It's in the twentieth century."

"A very badly maladjusted transmat?" the Doctor suggested. "No? Well, let's take a closer look at it, shall we?"

"And our tea with the professor?" Romana could not resist inquiring.

The Doctor did not look up from the console. "After we've looked into this anomaly," he replied. "This is a time machine, after all, Romana." He scratched his shaggy head. "I don't know what they're teaching at the Academy, these days."

Romana looked up from the console. "We've materialized, Doctor. The coordinates say we're near the center of North America." She flicked on the scanner, and a monotonous expanse of parched grass and dusty soil filled the viewscreen. "Not very scenic," she commented.

The view from the TARDIS doorway was equally uninspiring. Dust-choked grass stretched to the horizon, interrupted only by a dirt road that seemed to go from nowhere to oblivion. "They call it a dust bowl," the Doctor said quietly. "Drought shrivels up the topsoil, and then the wind blows it away." He scooped up a handful of dust and let it trickle slowly through his fingers. "This may be all that's left of someone's farm."

"What happens to the farmers, then?" Romana asked uneasily. On Gallifrey, drought and famine had been abstract concepts out of a history data file. She was not comfortable about seeing the reality first hand; she hoped she would never be.

"Most of the poor devils have gone to look for work in the cities," the older Time Lord replied.

"That's good."

"No, it isn't. A few years back, the national economy here suffered a major depression. There isn't enough work to go around." The Doctor surveyed the devastated landscape. "If the local metric did collapse," he said softly, "I wonder if anyone would notice."

"We'll notice, if we don't locate the source of that anomaly soon," Romana retorted. She shook her head. "There isn't even anything here!"

"A secret government laboratory?" the Doctor suggested, fiddling with the fringes of his scarf. "Experimenting with primitive transmat technology?"

"Doctor, these people are just starting to dabble with atomic energy! They can't have any idea of matter transmission. Besides--" Romana's hand swept outward in a gesture that encompassed the entire prairie. "I don't see any secret laboratories."

"Underground?" the Doctor proposed, but he was clearly baffled. He disappeared behind the TARDIS. "Aha!"

Romana followed him. The Doctor was standing at the edge of another dirt road, peering at a large sign with rapt interest. "Just the thing!"

The Time Lady arched her brows. In her (somewhat limited) experience, secret government laboratories did not announce their whereabouts on large signs with black, gold and scarlet lettering. "Corrigan's Carnival," she read aloud. "A thousand laughs, a thousand thrills. Dodgson, Nebraska -- June 14-21, 1935. See Khalid the Human Colossus perform incredible feats of strength. Marvel at Madame Morgana, Mystic Mistress of Prophecy. See the Mysterious Phantasm escape the Cage of Death. Thrill as the Great Tortelli hurls deadly daggers. See Little Baghdad perform the sensational Oriental Dance of-- Doctor, this is absurd! Some irresponsible idiot of a scientist is endangering the whole planet and you want to go to a carnival?"

The Doctor flashed a grin at her. "Perhaps Madame Morgana will be able to tell us where the transmat is. Have you got the detector?"

Romana pulled a small device from her pocket. "We can monitor the deterioration with this, but it will only act as a tracker when the transmat is in operation," she warned.

"All the more reason to find something to do while we're waiting," the Doctor replied. "Coming?"

Corrigan's Carnival was a large grey canvas tent with a wooden stage protruding from one side, surrounded by a motley collection of smaller tents, souvenir stands, and game booths made from nailed-together milk crates decorated with tattered bunting. On the stage, a gauze-veiled Little Baghdad was listlessly bumping and grinding in time to "Moon Over Miami" played on a scratchy victrola. The crowd of farmers and shopkeepers greeted her efforts with smiles as thin as their carefully mended clothing, while their womenfolk trudged from game booth to game booth, applauding every dart throw or ring toss, and doling out pennies for triumphal feasts of cotton candy and lemonade. The children oohed and aahed and giggled, darting everywhere, gawking at everything with wide eyes that saw none of the greyness beneath the gaudy colors.

The Doctor and Romana joined the audience just as Little Baghdad finished her dance and disappeared through a slit in the tent wall. The carnival barker, a stout bald man with apricot-colored whiskers, exhorted the crowd to buy tickets to the next performance. "This was only a taste, folks. The real excitement is inside."

"Come along now, Romana," the Doctor said briskly. He began digging through his pockets.

"Where are we going?"

"To buy tickets for the show, of course." The Doctor pulled out some coins. "We don't want to miss the real excitement, do we?"

Romana sighed and hurried to match the Doctor's pace. The man was exasperating, unscientific, and even childish, but he had the annoying habit of usually being right. There were Time Lords on Gallifrey who were more brilliant, or more scholarly, and many who made more sense, but none had the Doctor's flair for solving insolvable problems. That, no doubt, was why the White Guardian had chosen him to search for the Key to Time. It was also why she wanted to learn all she could from him before the inevitable summons called her back to lifetimes of tedious research on Gallifrey.

Romana stifled a yawn as the next exciting attraction appeared on stage. One by one, the Great Tortelli's daggers formed a crude outline around his assistant, who was none other than Little Baghdad, minus her veils and dressed in a sequin-covered bathing suit. She looked bored. A pair of shabby clowns engaged in a baffling dispute involving squirt guns and a rubber chicken. They were followed by Khalid the Human Colossus, who finished up his act by hoisting a small table on which were seated Little Baghdad and two nervous farmers.

Finally, the barker announced the Mysterious Phantasm. The crowd whispered and pointed as the stagehands brought out the Cage of Death.

The Cage was a six-foot high rectangle, enclosed on all sides by heavy wire mesh. It contained a wooden box of slightly smaller dimensions which bore an uneasy resemblance to a coffin standing on its end. The box's lid was pierced by many thin slits about three inches wide.

The barker extended his hands, palms up, in a gesture of invitation. "This is no sham, ladies and gentlemen! Who'll come up and examine this lethal appa-raytus?" He paused. "Mebbe it'd better be a gentleman. If the Phantasm fails... well, I'd just naturally hate for a lady to see all the blood."

There was a half-muffled shriek in the front row, and a flurry of whispers, then a clear voice called out, "I'd be delighted to take a look at it."

It was the Doctor. With his scarf dragging behind him like a royal train, he made his way to the front of the tent and mounted the three steps to the stage.

The barker held out his hand. "Thanks for your assistance, Mister--?"

"Doctor," the Time Lord corrected.

The barker addressed the audience. "Let's have a big hand for the Doc, folks!" The crowd applauded dutifully.

The Doctor made an elaborate show of examining the Cage. He rattled the outer frame, peered into the wooden box and thumped its sides, and concluded the inspection by using his scarf to measure the depth of the box.

"Thank you, Doc," the barker said. "Just stand right over here. Ladies and gentlemen, Corrigan's Carnival presents the amazing and astounding master of mystification, the Mysterious Phantasm!"

The Phantasm bounded onto the stage. Though he was no rival for Khalid, his lean form was muscular enough to do justice to the black jumpsuit that clung to him like a shadow. He stepped into the inner box and waited impassively as the barker slammed shut the box lid and secured the front of the cage with a stout padlock.

A demurely-clad Little Baghdad handed the Doctor a sword. "Take a good look, Doc," the barker invited. "Make sure it's real."

The Time Lord slashed the blade experimentally through the air, then executed a parry-riposte in prime against an invisible opponent. "Very badly balanced," he muttered, "but as I always said to Cyrano, it's not the sword that matters, it's the hand." He tested the point with a cautious fingertip, and returned the blade to the barker.

The barker grasped the sword, point down, and slowly lowered it over the Cage of Death. He passed the weapon between the wires of the outer cage and into the central hole in the box lid, directly over the Phantasm's heart. The crowd held its collective breath. One by one, swords were  
thrust into the box, until it was obvious that even the most limber of contortionists could not avoid being transformed into a human shish kebab. With the same deliberate slowness, the barker withdrew the swords one at a time. He unlocked the cage and flung open the box lid to reveal... nothing.

The box was empty. The gasps and muffled shrieks in the audience were interrupted by a triumphant drum roll. The Mysterious Phantasm appeared in the public entranceway of the tent and sprinted up the aisle to the stage. He turned to face the crowd, spreading his arms wide to receive their loud acclaim.

The Doctor waited for the crowd to disperse before rejoining Romana.

"Well?"

"The detector went wild just before the first sword went in. Doctor, you knew, didn't you?"

The Doctor shrugged. "Let's say I had a very strong suspicion."

Somehow, the Doctor didn't seem his usual confident self, Romana thought. "What is it?" she asked.

"The curious incident of the dog in the night-time.'"

Romana's face lit up with a triumphant smile. This once, he wasn't going to catch her! "Sherlock Holmes! The dog did nothing in the night-time.'"

" 'That was the curious incident.' " the Doctor completed the quote with a note of surprise in his voice.

It was mid-afternoon and there were no dogs in sight. Romana failed to see any connection.

"It's odd," the Doctor commented. "Most transmats do make a bit of noise, but when our friend the Phantasm popped out of his cage, I didn't hear a thing."

"Maybe the crowd drowned it out," Romana suggested, knowing as she said it that there had not been enough noise to interfere with a Gallifreyan's acute hearing. "Or maybe it's a particularly silent transmat."

"A primitive model? With the sort of maladjustment that this one must have? I think not."

"Doctor, one thing has been puzzling me," Romana confessed. "Assuming that some brilliant Earth scientist has invented a transmat before its time, why is he performing in a third-rate carnival in Dodgson, Nebraska?"

"Perhaps it's just a useful hiding-place, while he works on perfecting his invention," the Time Lord replied, but he did not sound convinced.

"It's far from perfect now. Look at these readings, Doctor. The local space-time metric is terribly unstable. I don't think it will survive another transmat jump, and the next show is less than two hours away."

"Then we ought to get to work. I'd like to take a closer look at that lethal apparatus.' " The Doctor strode into the now-empty tent. Romana hurried after him.

They climbed onto the stage. Romana peered at the Cage of Death. "There's certainly no room to hide the equipment in here."

"Even if you hollowed out the sides of the box, it wouldn't hold all the circuitry," the Doctor agreed.

Romana hesitated. "Doctor... is it possible that the transmat is operating somewhere else in the carnival? That it just happened to coincide with the Phantasm's act? The detector isn't that precise at short range, you know."

The Time Lord frowned. "It's possible, but if it's true, we have another mystery to explain." He gestured at the Cage of Death. "This sort of trick usually relies on a trap door, but I looked very carefully, and there isn't one."

"Then there must be a transmat very near by. Under the stage, perhaps?"

"Shall we take a look?" the Doctor invited.

"Hey! Whadda you doing in here?" A dark-haired young man appeared from the back-stage area. It took the two Time Lords several moments to recognize him. This nondescript figure in grimy work clothes looked nothing like the flamboyant performer they'd seen or the brilliant scientist they'd been expecting.

The Doctor held out his hand. "Hello, I'm the Doctor, this is Romana, and you of course are the Phantasm. How d'you do?"

The young man scowled. "What the hell are you doing, poking your nose where it don't belong?"

The Time Lord grinned as if in response to a cordial greeting. "I was terribly curious to look at this Cage of yours. I'm in rather the same line of work, you see--"

"You? You ain't a carny," the Phantasm sneered.

Actually, the Doctor had belonged to a carnival once, but that had been several centuries earlier, on another planet. "I had more in mind appearances and disappearances," he corrected. "It's rather a speciality of mine."

"All right, lemme see you disappear, Doctor. Now!" The young man's voice was harsh with anger.

"We're going," Romana said hastily.

"I'll decide when we're going," the Doctor chided. He turned on his heel. "Come along, Romana. We're going."

Once outside the tent, the two Time Lords paused to confer. "Not exactly a warm reception," the Doctor said.

"He wasn't just angry," Romana observed. "He was frightened -- no, he was terrified!"

"You noticed that too? I wonder what he's so frightened of."

"Of what we might discover?" the Time Lady suggested.

"We won't discover anything just standing around here." The Doctor began to drift away from the main tent. "Come along, Romana. How about a lemonade, eh?" He headed for the refreshment stand, and got in line behind a small girl in a pink gingham dress. Atop her neat red braids she wore a cardboard headdress with two floppy rabbit ears.

As the girl reached up for her cotton candy, her headdress toppled to the ground. The Doctor stooped down to retrieve it. "Excuse me," he said, "but you seem to have lost your ears."

The child giggled. "Thanks, mister." She replaced her ornament and skipped away, her face hidden behind a mass of pink fluff.

"What now?" Romana asked.

The Doctor pulled out his pocket watch. "I'll wait until our excitable friend is busy elsewhere, and then I'll take a look at the underside of that stage."

"Right. While you're doing that, I'll have a little chat with the Mystic Mistress of Prophecy."

"Ummn, Romana," the Doctor began, "What I said before -- that is, I didn't actually mean to suggest--"

"Probably not," his companion retorted, "but Madame Morgana works in the same carnival as the Mysterious Phantasm. Maybe she can unravel some of his mysteries for us."

Madame Morgana's tent was lit by candle stubs stuck in Coke bottles and draped with black hangings bearing astrological symbols. The Mystic Mistress of Prophecy was also draped in black. Except for the sequined veil covering her graying hair, she looked rather like a stout widow in her Sunday dress. She smelt faintly of jasmine and lemon drops.

"Be seated," she commanded. "How can Madame Morgana help you? A palm-reading, perhaps? Or is it a glimpse of the future in the crystal that you want, eh?"

_She'll probably tell me that I'm going on a long journey with a tall, dark man_, Romana thought. "Actually, I want to ask some questions," she said.

"Of course you do." Madame Morgana smiled, revealing a large gold tooth. She waited.

"Oh, sorry." Romana fished in her pocket. She placed a ten-cent piece in the center of the table. "Tell me about the Phantasm."

Madame Morgana pushed the dime back to Romana. "I don't answer those kind of questions. Maybe this is just a two-bit dog-and-pony show, but carnies don't squeal on carnies."

"Not even if the other person is in trouble?"

"What kind of trouble?"

Romana hesitated. How did she explain matter transmission and temporo-spacial anomalies to someone who made her living with a crystal ball?

"Your friend is using some terribly dangerous equipment in his act. People could be hurt. I'm sorry, I can't explain any better than that -- you'll have to trust me."

Madame Morgana's dark eyes were expressionless. "Trust." She let the word linger as if she were tasting it. "That's a tall order." She grinned suddenly in a way that reminded Romana of the Doctor. "I haven't been running a mitt joint for thirty years without learning what makes folks tick." She reached for the dime. "Okay, so what do you want to know about Stan?"

"Stan?" Romana echoed.

"Stanislaus Markiewicz. You think it says Mysterious Phantasm' on his birth certificate?" The fortuneteller chuckled.

"Where is he from? Has be been with the carnival long?"

Madame Morgana fixed her gaze on the crystal without really seeing it. "Lessee... he joined up in Tulsa -- I guess that was three years ago. Before that, I don't know. Lotta carnies don't like talking about their past. He says he came over from Poland when he was four, and he grew up in Chicago. I think his folks are dead."

"Does he have any special friends in the carnival? People he's close to?"

Morgana shook her head. "Stan isn't the kinda guy that gets close to anybody. You can count on him in a pinch, but... special friends? Sometimes he plays gin with my Joe."

"Your Joe?"

"The Great Tortelli, he's my boy Joe," the fortuneteller said proudly. "His papa was a knife kinker too, God rest him. I was his assistant. You can laugh if you want to, but I was a real eyeful in the old days, and I filled a pair of spangled tights better than that sfacciata Emmy Ryan. Thinks she's queen of the world -- and her just a cootch dancer! -- but when she loses her looks and her figure, she won't have the brains to find something new like I did." Morgana shrugged. "Old ladies talk too much, huh? I just wanted you to know that I was young and pretty like you once."

Romana calculated idly that she was probably twice Morgana's age. "Does Stan like to tinker with machines?"

"Stan? You gotta be kidding! When the truck breaks down, he don't know the carburetor from the clutch."

Romana frowned. This didn't fit at all! "Then is there someone else in the carnival who's very interested in science?"

"Well, there's Jerry..." Morgana said dubiously.

"Who?"

"Mike Corrigan's nephew, Jerry. He's eleven. He reads these weird stories about robots and time machines and people from other planets. Crazy, huh? He's a nice kid, but he'll talk your ear off about that stuff."

The Time Lady repressed a smile. "Has Stan always done the same act?"

"Ever since he's been on this show, yeah. It's funny, though. Most kinkers, they talk a lot about their act. Stan doesn't. Last month my Joe said that Stan had a great act, and why didn't he go to one of the big shows, maybe even Ringling, but Stan just shrugged and said he likes it here. It's funny," Morgana mused aloud, "My Joe said, Mamma, for a moment I'd swear he was gonna hit me.' I asked, was he so mad? and Joe answers, It's crazy, but I think he was scared.'"


	2. Chapter 2

The Doctor slipped into the main tent. Sunlight filtered through the canvas roof, bathing the interior in a muted grey light. The canvas had a filtering effect on noise too, translating the outside din into a formless sound like the rush of wind or water.

The Cage of Death was nowhere in sight. Without hesitation, the Time Lord headed for the stage. When he reached the platform's edge, he dropped to his hands and knees and crawled underneath. The space below the stage was cramped and dim, but not dark enough to prevent him from seeing the astounding truth. "This could be serious," he muttered to himself.

The Doctor crawled out again, and scrambled to his feet. Above and behind him a voice growled, "You again!"

The Doctor spun around. The Mysterious Phantasm was striding across the length of the stage. "I told you to get your meddling nose out of here!"

"You did," the Doctor agreed, "but I wanted to take a look at your secret under the stage."

"You're crazy! There ain't nothin' under that stage!"

"Exactly!" The Doctor smiled. "No trap door, no power system, no transmat-- nothing except dust," he added, slapping carelessly at the knees of his baggy trousers. "A trap-door trick without a trap door, and a transmat anomaly without a transmat. The curious incident of the dog in the night is all the more curious because there is no dog!" The Time Lord climbed onto the stage. "Tell me, when did you discover that you could teleport?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," the young man sputtered, but there was a note of panic in his bluster.

"I think you do," the Doctor said pleasantly. "It must be rather convenient: popping out of existence, then popping back to another place entirely. I imagine it saves on shoe leather, to say nothing of bus fares, eh?"

The Phantasm's shoulders sagged. He trudged to the edge of the stage, sat down, and stared at the dusty tops of his work boots. "How did you know?"

"Oh, I've had some experience with this sort of thing," the Doctor said off-handedly. "Mind you, it's not a common talent, particularly on Earth. I don't suppose either of your parents...?"

The Phantasm laughed. It was a harsh sound with no merriment in it. "My old man knew all about disappearing. He took off when I was five. Then Mama died, so they sent me to St. Ambrose's." He shrugged. "The sisters were okay, but kinda strict. We couldn't go out of the yard without special permission. Once, I was about thirteen, I saw this dog in the alley across the way. I just thought about how I wanted to be over there -- and bam! I was there. The dog ran away. I was scared too, but I had to get back. Didn't want nobody seeing me, so I thought about the coal cellar, and -- bam, again!"

The Doctor nodded. "Thirteen? That fits. This sort of psychokinetic gift usually appears at puberty."

"Never knew the educated word for it; I just called it hopping,'" the Phantasm confessed. "First I thought it was some kinda black magic. That Sunday I played sick, so I didn't have to go to Mass. I was scared God would strike me dead the minute I set foot in the chapel. The next week the sisters made me go, and when I didn't die, I figured it wasn't magic. Didn't know what to think. After a while I stopped wondering." He looked up. "Almost every night after lights out I hopped out. Mostly I just walked. Sometimes I went to this jazz club. The sisters would've been as mad as wet hens if they'd known, but I was too young and dumb to figure out there was a speakeasy in back.

"When I was sixteen, I went on the bum, travelling. Never asked for a meal unless I worked for it, never used hopping for nothing bad. I was arrested once in Winokee, Oklahoma for sleeping in somebody's barn." He scowled, remembering. "A lot of 'accidents' happen in the Winokee County Jail, 'specially if they bust you on a vagrant charge, so I hopped out before one happened to me. Another time I pitched hay all day for a farmer who only paid me half what he promised. Come night, I hopped inside and took the rest, but I swear I never stole." His dark eyes met the Doctor's. "You a G-man or something?"

"I'm not from the government," the Doctor replied. "I'm a scientist, and I need to talk to you about a little problem."

"I ain't done nothing wrong!"

"It's not what you do that's a problem," the Doctor corrected, "it's what happens when you do it, if you get my meaning."

The Phantasm's blank face said that he had gotten very little meaning out of the Doctor's statement.

"Let me put it another way," the Time Lord said pleasantly. "I don't want to sound melodramatic, but if you hop' one more time, this entire planet is going to be destroyed. Is that clearer?"

"You're crazy," the Phantasm said.

The Doctor sighed. He had heard that particular accusation too often over the past few centuries. Sometimes it seemed that if he heard it once again it would become true. "I don't think you quite appreciate the immense consequences of a temporo-spacial metric discontinuity." Another blank stare. The Doctor scratched his head. "Have you ever eaten Swiss cheese?"

The Phantasm listened closely to the Time Lord's explanation. "Doctor, how come the folks from other planets who can hop haven't blown up their worlds?"

"I'm not certain," the Doctor admitted, "but I imagine the genetic code that gave you the ability is a bit garbled. Other teleporters simply don't have that defect."

"You're saying I'm a cripple?" the young man blurted out.

"Well--"

"Look, Doctor, I don't care. If my leg was crippled, I wouldn't stop walking 'cause I walked a little crooked. Maybe I don't hop as good as those other folks, but I'm not gonna stop doing that either. You say you're not sure what makes me different. Well, I don't think you really know if I'm hurting that metric thing."

"Why can't you understand that billions of lives are at stake here?" the Doctor implored.

"What about my life?" the Phantasm shouted. "What am I gonna do if I don't hop any more? I can't do the act without it. I ain't no Houdini. There's a Depression on, Doctor. People with fancy college degrees are selling apples for a nickel on the street. There ain't no jobs for guys like me, 'specially if they were born in a place that most people can't pronounce."

The Doctor was spared the trouble of a reply. A short, wiry man appeared in the entryway of the tent. It was the Great Tortelli. "Hey, Stan! Is this mark bothering you?"

The Phantasm jumped off the stage. "Joe! Yeah, he's some kinda nut. I caught him trying to bust up the Cage. He says it's gonna destroy the world."

The Doctor winced. There was just enough truth in that lie to ruin any explanation he might attempt. He turned to the Phantasm. "Please, consider what you're doing. The fate of the Earth is in your hands."

"You're right, Stan," the Great Tortelli snickered, "the guy is a loony. You want me to run him off?" He strode up the aisle.

"He'd just come back," the Phantasm replied. "How 'bout we put him somewhere until the show's over? The gilly wagon, maybe."

"I don't think you understand--" the Doctor began. His words were interrupted by a pricking sensation in his side. The Great Tortelli was holding the hilt end of the knife whose point rested just beneath the Doctor's ribs.

"Right this way, mister," the knife kinker invited.

The Doctor's two captors escorted him out of the tent to the gilly wagon, which was evidently served as a mobile storage shed. When he was thoroughly bound and gagged, they shoved him on the floor between a large coil of rope and a stack of folded tarpaulins.

The Phantasm paused in the doorway. "Don't worry, Doctor. Somebody'll let you out after the show's over. Don't go anywhere, OK?" He chuckled and slammed the door behind him.

Romana exited the fortuneteller's tent, blinking in the bright sunlight. She hoped that the Doctor had had better luck with his investigation. She headed towards the refreshment stand, where they had agreed to rendezvous. No Doctor. She waited ten minutes, then began a methodical sweep of the carnival's midway. Game booths, souvenir stands, outdoor stage. No Doctor. She even managed a peek into the main tent before a roustabout shooed her away. No Doctor. She returned to the refreshment stand. Still no Doctor.

The outside stage was deserted. A small crowd drifted into the tent. The four o'clock show was beginning.

Romana frowned. She'd have to check under the stage. The inner and outer stages were obviously a single structure; she should be able to crawl through. She lifted the canvas draped in front of the stage and darted beneath.

The understage was cramped and shadowy, and her every movement raised up a choking cloud of dust. Romana kept crawling. She had been in far worse places, and she was not in the least prone to claustrophobia. Above her, the floor boards vibrated and creaked under several sets of footsteps, while a vaguely Asian tune wailed at top volume. Little Baghdad was performing her terpsichorean interpretation of Oriental passion. Romana heard the muffled thunder of applause, followed by a trumpet blaring the clown music. She crawled faster.

Romana entered the inner stage and saw nothing but dust and shadows. "This could be serious," she murmured, unaware that she was quoting the Doctor.

The Time Lady reversed her route, and emerged from her wooden cavern just as the Great Tortelli's first dagger thudded into his target. She ran down the midway, and into the small tent at the far end.

Madame Morgana looked up. "Romana? What'sa matter? You look like something the cat dragged in."

"It's the Doctor -- I can't find him anywhere."

"I'm sure he's OK--" the fortuneteller began.

Romana cut her off. "There isn't much time left. If I can't find him soon, there's going to be a catastrophe."

Madame Morgana tossed her spangled veil on the table. "C'mon. I'll ask around. The lot isn't that big -- somebody must have seen him." They trotted up the midway: Romana following on the heels of a slightly breathless Morgana. Twice they stopped to question a roustabout, and twice received an eloquent shrug in reply.

"I think he was going to look around the tent," Romana said.

Morgana nodded. "This way, then." She led the Time Lady into the backstage area where a small crowd of performers and roustabouts conversed in low murmurs. Little Baghdad arched her heavily-penciled brows. "What's _she_ doin' back here?"

Morgana ignored her. "Listen up, folks." She repeated Romana's description of the Doctor. "Anybody seen him on the lot?"

"Yeah, by the lemonade joint," one of the clowns replied, "but that was an hour ago."

There was a burst of applause, and the Great Tortelli appeared backstage. "Show's going pretty good."

"Hey, Joe -- your ma's here lookin' for some fella," Khalid drawled.

The knife kinker turned. "Mama? Who are you--" His voice and limbs froze simultaneously as he caught sight of Romana.

"Giuseppe!" Madame Morgana snapped. She followed this with a rapid torrent of Italian that the Time Lady carefully pretended not to understand.

The Great Tortelli spread his hands in an apologetic gesture. "He's OK, Mama. We just put him in the gilly wagon."

"Tell me where it is," Romana ordered.

"It's about time you got here," the Doctor grumbled, rubbing at the chafemarks on his wrists. "Romana, we've been rather mistaken about--"

"Yes, I know -- he's a teleporter," Romana interrupted. "Doctor, we haven't any time. The show's almost over."

The Doctor struggled to his feet, then jumped backwards as a lithe black figure flickered into existence immediately in front of him. "The show is over, Romana," the Time Lord said quietly. "Everything's over."

The Phantasm clapped a shaking hand to his head. "Doctor, it's tearing, just like you said! I can feel it ripping open, like a wet paper bag full of marbles. Doctor, you gotta do something!"

The Doctor gestured helplessly. "The only way is to bind the discontinuity with matter, and it would take hours to calculate the necessary mass, even with K-9's help."

"We don't have hours," Romana retorted, "and we don't have K-9."

"You got me," Stan said. The two Time Lords stared at him. "All you need is a little bit of something solid to stitch down the edges, right? I can do that."

"But you haven't any equipment to calibrate the mass," Romana protested.

"Never had any equipment to hop with," Stan countered, "but I can get on a freight train at full speed and not miss a step. I can feel the hole, and I can feel how much stuff I'm gonna need to fix it."

"An intuitive calculation?" the Time Lady said, aghast.

"Right now," the Doctor interjected, "a bit of human intuition is worth all the computers in the cosmos put together. Stan -- the binding will be most effective if you do it at the point of maximum discontinuity."

"He means in the tent," Romana translated. "Come on!"

They ran towards the tent entrance. "We've got to get those people out of there," the Doctor said.

"That's easy," Romana replied. She cupped her hands around her mouth and screamed, "Fire! FIRE!"

A torrent of humanity poured out of the tent, pushing and shouting. The barker, grim-faced, pulled free of the mob. "Stan! What's going on? Where's the fire?"

"There ain't no fire, Mike," the Phantasm replied, "but you gotta get these folks away from here, fast."

The barker did not hesitate. "Step along this way, ladies and gents," he bellowed. "This way! Step along lively, but don't push. Everything's under control. Henry! Help me move 'em along!"

The Phantasm slipped into the nearly-empty tent, followed by the two Time Lords. "OK, Doctor, I'm all set. You and the lady get out."

Romana froze. For the first time she stopped to consider exactly what would happen at the point of maximum discontinuity when the edges were bound together. "Stan, you mustn't do it in here. You don't understand--"

He smiled at her. "You heard the Doctor. Best place to do it is from center stage." A running leap carried him onto the platform. "Get out!"

The Doctor grabbed Romana's wrist and yanked. The two Time Lords ran in the direction of the panicky carnival crowd. A few yards outside the tent, Romana skidded to a halt to avoid trampling on a small figure sprawled on the ground. The Doctor scooped the child up, slung her across his shoulder and kept running. Romana, trotting behind him, saw a pale face framed by two dangling braids like long red tassels, and a thin hand that clutched at a cardboard headdress as if it were all the treasures of El Dorado.

The mob's panic subsided as they reached the road that marked the edge of the carnival lot. Family members who had been parted in the stampede reclaimed each other. The carnies in the crowd silently drifted out of it, forming their own separate assemblage.

The Doctor and Romana stood between the two groups. The Doctor seemed to have quite forgotten the presence of his young passenger, who amused herself by adorning his hat with her own unorthodox headgear until her mother arrived to claim her. The Time Lord, like most of the people around him, was too busy watching the carnival tent.

The air in front of the tent shimmered and seemed somehow to... twist. The tent writhed insanely, like a distorted image in a funhouse mirror. "It's the smoke that makes it look like that," someone muttered, but there was no smoke. As two of the spectators knew, space itself was contorting.

Romana watched, entranced. A set of convoluted equations flickered through her mind. This would make a wonderful paper for the Gallifreyan Institute of Physics, she thought. Too bad she wouldn't survive to write it.

She fumbled in her pocket for the detector. It slipped from her hand and fell. And fell. And fell. Like a pea dropped in a jar of honey, it floated downwards with lazy grace. No one seemed to notice. "Doctorrr, whaaatsss haaappennninnnng?"

"Ti-i-i-mmme dissstorrrrtionn!" he shouted back. "The disssconnntinnuity issss do-oo-inggg ittt! It's a bit irregular, of course," he observed, grabbing the detector as it drifted upwards past his hand.

"Doctor, the discontinuity's growing. The black hole will be developing soon."

CRACKKKK! In the days when men believed in such things, they would have described the sound that echoed across the prairie as the shattering of the crystal spheres of heaven. The noise was accompanied by a flare of white light. In the distance, the carnival tent billowed out like a parachute, then burst into flame. A small child wailed. A woman fainted. Someone whistled in awe. Time resumed its normal course, though only two of the spectators noticed.

Mike Corrigan was the first of the carnies to recover from his amazement. "Stan! Did he get out OK? Has anybody seen Stan?"

Mutterings and shaking heads. Joe Tortelli called out, "I think he stayed behind to try and take care of... of whatever the hell it was."

"Merciful God," Corrigan whispered. His remark was echoed by the gathered carnies in six different languages.

"Mike, what do we do about the tent?" Khalid asked.

Corrigan shrugged. "Unless you got a fire hose under your hat, we watch it burn."

The ashes were still warm when the Doctor and Romana entered the fire-ravaged area. Except for the tent and one game stall, the carnival was undamaged.

Romana kicked at a charred piece of planking. "He might have teleported out at the last moment."

"He might have," the Doctor agreed. He did not quote the odds. Romana knew them as well as he did. "With those energy fluctuations, it would have been an uncontrolled jump. He could be anywhere on the planet."

The Time Lady nodded. It was much more likely that Stan had waited at center stage for his last and most spectacular finale. "Doctor, what do you suppose he used for the matter? It couldn't have been air; a moving gas would have been too unstable to calculate, even for him."

The Doctor stooped down. When he straightened, he held out his cupped hand for Romana's inspection. It was full of dust. "You know, Romana, humans are remarkable creatures," he mused. "Just when you're ready to write them all off as a primitive, quarrelsome, selfish lot--" He gazed over his shoulder in the direction of the carnival. "What a piece of work is a man!'" he quoted, "how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty... the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?'" He gestured grandly, and the dust in his hand was flung free. It hung in the air for a moment like a puff of smoke, and then dissipated.

The two Time Lords took one last silent look at the blast site, then headed back towards the TARDIS, leaving the carnies to mourn their own. "Romana, you've got the coordinates wrong again," the Doctor chided. "I told you distinctly that I wanted to materialize at teatime on July 4, 1861, but you've landed us on July 4, 1862."

"You said 1862, Doctor."

"Did I? Well, I meant 1861. We're a year late, and the tea is probably cold by now." The Time Lord snatched his hat from the rack and put it on.

Romana looked at him and blinked. "Doctor--"

"Not now, Romana, I'm late."

"But, Doctor--"

"Not now, Romana."

The Time Lady shrugged and followed him out of the TARDIS, removing her own flower-wreathed straw hat from the rack as she passed by.

* * *

It had been a delightful tea. The three little girls, thoroughly stuffed with cold chicken, jam tarts, cream buns, and other delicacies, sat contentedly beside their host on the bank of the Cherwell.

"Could we have a story, please?" asked Edith.

"Oh, yes, a story!" Lorina chimed. The third girl, smiling shyly, added her plea to her sisters'.

"A story..." their host mused, "let me think..."

Three pairs of young eyes opened wide with astonishment as a curious individual appeared over the crest of the riverbank: a tall figure, oddly dressed, with an unmistakable pair of rabbit ears protruding from his hat. The apparition pulled a pocket watch from his vest. "Romana, we'll have to come back another day. It's already past teatime. We're too late!" The figure disappeared in the direction from which he had come.

The middle sister giggled. "I've never seen a rabbit with a waistcoat pocket before," Alice gasped, "or a watch to take out of it."

"Haven't you, my dear?" the Reverend Charles Dodgson inquired with a sparkle in his eye. "Then pray allow me to tell you about one..."

 

\-- THE END --

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor's quote near the end of this chapter is from _Hamlet_, Act II, Scene II


End file.
